Human Resources & Information Technology Committee - Regular Meeting

All right. I would like to call tonight's meeting of the Human Resources and Information Technology Committee for Wednesday, April 23 to order. Please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much. Roll call of membership. We will start on my left and we'll go through and let everybody know.

Adrian Stanson Martin, District 11.

Baya Jones, District 10. Sherry S. Hartzine, District 13.

Patrick Haydn, District 7. Nate Wolfe, District 12.

Thank you very much. Now we'll move on to item number four. That is item 20 five-three 99, the minutes of our last meeting which was in 2024. Who remembers that? Move to

approve. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Are there any questions, changes, discussion? There being none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? All right. None of those. So we'll move on to Item Number five, Public Hearing and Appearances. There are none.

And Item six, twenty five-four 100, the request to elect a vice chair. Now how this goes is that I will open the floor for nominations. Individuals be nominated but there is no second required on a nomination. And then we will determine whether there's anyone to vote, you know, opposite, if there's more than one nominees. I would like to begin by nominating Alderperson Jones for vice chair. Mr. Hayden?

I would like to nominate Alder Wolf.

All right. We have two folks on the table. Is there anyone else that has any other nominations? So Attorney Glad, how does this work with multiple nominees? All right.

We'll begin then with all those in favor of Aldeperson Jones as vice chair, please raise your hand. All those in favor of Aldeperson Wolf as vice chair, please raise your hand. Alderson Wolf has the votes. Obviously I did not ask either of you if you accepted the nomination but it looks like you're happily doing so. And then we then confirm that Alderson Wolf is the vice chair. Thank you very much. We'll move on to twenty five-four zero one, request to set a meeting date and time. Is everyone amenable to Wednesdays at this time? Any questions or issues? Alright.

Moving forward, we'll move on to 20Five-four02 designating a contact person. I received from Director Rachman that our contact person is Casey Lemrand, our HR Administrative Support Specialist. Then we'll move next to item number 20Five-four03, Request to Approve Changes to the Community and Economic Development, YCED, Table of Organization. Director Holman, you are at District 1?

Do

you need to make a

Oh, let's get a motion on the table so Second. We Motion and a second. Director Holman.

Sure. So what you have before you is a request from the Community Development Department to take an existing administrative position, which classified at grade four, and elevate it to grade six, titling it administrative and accounting services specialist. We've been working closely with director Rachman and his team, as well as the folks in DPW engineering. One, to make sure the job description reflected what the incumbent is currently doing, but also a reorganization which would shift some duties from the DPW accountant as well as from myself and my deputy director absorb it into this position, and then move some of the lower administrative tasks to our customer service team. So that's what's before you today.

We're respectfully requesting an approval. One thing I didn't highlight in the memo that I'm personally excited about is that it also creates a method where team members who might work within city government in an administrative or fiscal role at a more entry level, this could be an opportunity for someone to grow into a new position when this incumbent would retire.

Thank you. Director Ashman, do you have anything to add?

So just want to stress, I think Director Holman did a great job of bringing this forward. In fact, our discussions actually started shortly after she started with the city in 2023 and really redefining the position and a lot of questions that we had to make sure we flush through the job description, that we did the appropriate evaluation for compensation. So I want to compliment her because a lot times departments don't want to spend that much time. They want to get going right away. But she was willing to do it the right way.

And I'm in full support. I think what you will see citywide is that a lot of clerical administrative positions are being elevated to a higher level just because the jobs change and skills change, etcetera. The other thing that I wanted to bring forward, sometimes we do a reorganization and simply update the job description. There's no title change. The reason I felt like this need to be brought forward as a reorg is I actually view this as we're eliminating a position in creating a new position. I see there's enough differences. That's why I think this needs approval from the committee.

Thank you. Director Holman, how is your budget supporting this in this year and then in future years? How do you

see So in this year, we have had some attrition within the department, several folks who were hired in the latter half of last year that were actually budgeted at higher amounts. I would anticipate that in years beyond 2025, now that this position is providing some fiscal support to inspections, a percentage of the FTE for this position could be supported by revenue generated through that function.

Excellent. Thank you. Any questions? Any other questions from the committee? Nothing else? Alder Wolf.

Thank you, Chair. So I'm new to the committee. Hi, everyone. So my question is about the additional workload for the people in customer service. Are we also looking at potentially increasing their wages this year as well for that additional workload?

I could add a little bit. So we've been I've been working in particular closely with their supervisor who is actually currently floating to the customer service pool due to some vacancies we have. With the conversion to Tyler Munis for asset management, a lot of the clerical work that that team used to manually put in is no longer being done by them. So that frees up some of their time to then absorb tasks that our current person in community development was previously doing.

Okay. So their workload is going down and then we're It would balance it equals it up.

Yep.

Alright. Thank you.

Any other questions, concerns?

There being none, all those in favor of the change, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Abstentions? All right. That passes five-zero. Thank you very much. On to item number 20Five-four04, request to approve the social media policy. Do I have a

Move to approve.

Second.

Motion and a second.

Sorry.

Director Rachman?

I'd just like to kind of set the table first before we turn it over to our communications department. This is not an HR policy and generally I bring HR policies forward to this committee so this is out of the mayor's office however the mayor doesn't really have a committee so when the mayor does have a policy I think history has been to run it through this committee so that it can get to the full council for approval. Just wanted to share that piece as to why that's at this committee tonight. So having said that, Andy from our mayor's office is here. She's our manager of communications and public engagement. And she can answer any questions that you have.

Communications manager, Anna. It's a very long title, so sometimes hard to link. Yeah. Any questions? So I'm Andy.

I'm the communications and public engagement manager. And this is a social media policy in front of you, and I just wanted to, like, you know this policy is basically the people who will be interacting on the social media as well as we'll be governing our post as well. So of late, we are seeing some of the, you know, unrelated comments happening on the post, which is actually taking away the traction of the post what it is meant for. And though we know we cannot hide comments, are like, you know, as a as a matter of free speech, but there have been spamming, a lot of spamming going on on all the social media channels, and that has governed us to create a social media policy. And this is a very sim you know, a regular thing which all the municipalities municipalities do on a regular basis.

And that's why I thought of like bringing it to your attention and, you know, to get your feedback or any additional insights you have on this policy.

Thank you. Any questions, concerns from folks up here? Alder Hayden.

Thank you. And I really appreciate this. It's needed because of the content that you get out there. And I guess, how are you looking to combat all these items that you've kind of thrown out here? Because like you said, we do want to not come across like we're implementing rigid standards upon anybody who looks to engage with us on social media, but at the same time, make it productive for those who are doing it for the right reasons.

Right. And we have always followed that. And because every post which goes has subjective meaning to it. But there has been an increase. And we are getting a lot of constituent complaints from people that, you know, you need to hide this. And we have not been able explain it to them that that's not what Citi can does, you know, can do on a regular basis. But of course, there's spamming happening, a lot of unrelated post happening, which takes away what that post was meant to be. And then people are not engaging with it. And that means that it's not miss you know, information going out the way it should be. Like, And let's say for example, Park and Rec has some guide going on and then somebody starts spamming it, like 15 messages, which is completely unrelated to that.

And then what happens is nobody engaging with that and then we are getting the same calls, hey, we didn't see the guide Because of course, you thought it's a spam post and you didn't check it out. So this is what has led to this policy. And of course, as I have written on this, we won't be hiding any comments, but just the ones like spamming or flooding of the content. Flooding has been the biggest problem we are facing at this point. And you might have also seen, noticed that all the pages, all the city pages have been flooded with a lot of comments of the same nature, which is not related to the post which wasn't meant to be. And so it's not very constructive and not helping us at all at this time when we are trying to communicate some of the policies or some of the post or maybe Citizens Academy. Whatever we are doing, it's not getting the traction we want to see.

Are we able to use the platforms themselves and report some of these things? Or does that kind of fall under the once you report it, now it's gone, and now you look like you're covering things up as a government?

No. We have not done that in the past. It's just like the more I'm seeing the algorithm working differently with these states on Facebook and other social media channel, I think this policy will really help us to at least, you know, stop that flooding happening. We are seeing that from one of no. I don't wanna name the person, but we are seeing a lot happening from that person, and we are really flooded with lot of constituent messages that, you know, why are you not stopping this?

And it's just that we don't have a policy in place to tell them exactly, hey. These are the policies, and you need to learn about it. And that once you approve it, you continue to approve this, and I will put it on the website, and we will put a link posted on the social media channels that, you know, here's our social media policy, and please take a look at it. So normally, have never hide it. We have archive social, which takes care of all the public records. So it's not like we don't have tracking. But flooding has been a problem. And that's why I require this policy to be on the website.

And was this policy that we see before us somewhere else in practice in some other municipality? Many municipalities. Many, many municipalities. And they have more stringent thing that

they can hide stuff if they're seeing things unrelated to the post. We have not put that here because, again, unrelated post may be very subjective if it's an opinion based one. But right now, that's the one we are seeing on our city social media. Those are not opinion based. They are just not related at all. You can't call it either opinion or advertisement. It's just like, you know, spamming at this point.

Understood. Attorney Glenn, does the city attorney's office have any concerns or questions in regards to the social media policy?

I worked with Andy, in order to get something down that's defensible, protects free speech, and clearly states the intention of the forums that were created.

Excellent. Thank you. Alder Hayden.

Is there a plan for when you do take action on one of the items that's listed here for you to list a reference to the social media policy so people understand that you are not being subject or yet being subjective in the way that you're going about it. People have a way to reference what the guidelines are and what our policy is.

Yeah. So this policy, once you if you approve it, it will go on the website. And we will post it in the About Us section, like where the where you can completely see if that's your question.

No. My question is more when you're actually enforcing the policy. Are you going to reference that as a reason for enforcing it This so that when someone

comment has been removed because of our social media policy with And a link.

You can find it here.

JAMES And that will be a good question for the legal, too. But yes, if that is the case, normally the comments are hidden, if that is the case we see. Sometimes we disable comments. But I don't know if I will be using that, because I do not like using that, again, for the speech reasons. It will be very, very key specific if that happens. But having a social media policy is important.

Attorney Glenn?

And I think when we I talked with Andy when we were visualizing and conceptualizing what this would look like, the discussion involved on the Facebook directly, there would be a link to this so that they're aware of it. Because it does have kind of the responsible behavior, so we want it very forward facing. So I don't know if that changed, but least at for, like, Facebook, it would be on there. I'm not aware how any of the other social media platforms work. So I'm a little limited in my scope, but I thought on Facebook, where are we

talking about? Facebook is the biggest platform. We are seeing a lot of spamming. Normally, Instagram, I haven't seen anything. And LinkedIn, where we post, we haven't seen anything. It's just Facebook. And right now, the algorithm is completely haberty, and it's not helping us at all.

All right. Any other questions from up here? All right. There being none, all those in favor? Oh, I Alder Woolf.

It's all good. Thank you, Chair. I like the policy. I think that considering the state of meta in general, I think it's about time that we get one. I think it's very thorough, and I think it covers a lot of ground. Good work on it.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Anything else from up here? All right. There being none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? That passes five-zero. Item number 20Five-four zero five, request to approve changes to the fringe benefits policy. Director oh, let's get a motion to approve.

Move. Second.

And a second. Director Ratchett.

So this is a human resources policy. Just for the benefit of the committee, on an annual basis, our department tries to review about 10% of our policies. And we bring them forward to this committee either as an information update or as an action item if we feel the policy has changed. This policy was not up for review, but as we went through our year end processing of vacation and going into the new year and how time rolls over, we felt like some changes were needed to the policy to really clarify what is really the practice. So those changes for the most part are outlined on page pages eight and pages nine of the attached document.

None of the changes that you see in here are increasing benefits. There's no additional payouts for employees. It's just the way we administer the benefit and the way our system can administer the benefit. We want the policy to reflect exactly what the practice is. Some of the other language that's in the policy, for example, when we talk about rollover, if you're a part time employee, We're trying to put more details in there because that question has come up.

So like for example, if a full time employee is able to roll forty hours over, a part time employee is able to roll whatever hours they work in a typical week. So if they work twenty hours, they can roll over twenty hours. So we're just trying to clarify a few of those in the policy because that question comes up over and over. Having said that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you have on this policy.

Questions? Of related to the policy, We had talked recently and you had said there are a lot of individuals at the city with ten, twenty, a lot of years of experience that are leaving. Are you finding that you have to update a lot more policies as you have these tenured individuals leaving?

I don't think that I'm finding that we have to update more policies. I think we have a guide when it comes to flexible work environment, to working from home, which obviously is very limited, but that is an option to modified schedules. That is something newer employees are looking for. So it's not new, but we see more of that. In regards to the policy, there was a time where a new employee, we would not negotiate vacation. I think we offer pretty generous benefits to start out with. We do have to negotiate vacation many times, especially if they have experience. That's the change, but it's not really a change to the policy.

Any other questions or concerns from anybody up here?

Alright. There being none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? That passes Five-zero. Excellent. We'll move on then to our information items. The first one is 20Five-four06, the ERP conversion update. I assume Director Popp is going to speak on that.

Yep, I will. So this memo is in response to past Chair Jones a few weeks ago. Got an inquiry from a resident just on the status of the ERP module and conversion. It had been a while since we reported out on it. So I think the timing is really good here, especially because we have a new committee starting and bring everyone up to speed on where we are on the ERP conversion, as well as what it is and what's happening.

So this memo focuses on four modules of the ERP system, the content management system, the enterprise asset management system, utility billing, and permitting and licensing. So I'm very happy to report that the TCM, the content management module, is live. It went live on February 28. The conversion to that, the conversion costs were approved by this committee a few months ago, several months ago, in 'twenty four, I believe, to get that done. And it was completed.

The cost of the former system, dollars 25,000 annual, will not we won't absorb that this year. That's off the books. We will not be paying that. A few weeks later, the EAM module, which is also part of Tyler Munis Asset Management, that went live the week of March 10. So the asset management system has completed as well. So not quite as good a news on utility billing. That has moved into its second year. It'll be a two year conversion as of June. I think there was a kickoff meeting in May '3, and official work started to take place in June. Nothing has really gone wrong with the utility billing conversion.

It's not like we've had some delay due to errors or systems blowing up or anything because it's been more complicated than was initially thought it would be. There's just a lot involved in utility billing. It's also a very cautious conversion. When we do a conversion like asset management or content management, that's really, for the most part, an internal tool to the city. So if there's problems with the conversion or errors in the conversion, if the system's down for a few hours the morning of the conversion, it's not very visible to the public.

It's not visible to the residents or your constituents. Utility billing is extremely visible. So if we send out tens of thousands of incorrect utility bills, this is a very big deal for the city. It causes a great deal of confusion, as you can imagine. I see a lot of heads nodding. I don't need to go into it. So I think there's just been a lot of caution in regards to that. There's also a lot of pieces to the conversion. It's been explained to me several times by the lead systems analyst. A couple different issues.

One is we're on a completely customized system. The IBM I series, you've heard me talk about it in this committee and even in council before. It just puts us in a place where there's no precedent for the conversion. So if you have other cities and other municipalities converting to Tyler Munis from other shrink-wrap off the shelf ERP systems, there's a path. There's precedent. There's things that Tyler Munis can go back to and help with the current conversion. This one is completely homegrown. All of the solutions for the conversion have to come from our team. Staffing is another issue. We're down to our last I series employee at the city.

When I arrived here, we had three. Two have retired since then. We're down to the last person. So there's not a lot of FTEs in the IT department to even complete this conversion. Thankfully, the person we have is the person who wrote the vast majority of utility billing and the modules that we remain on. So we're fortunate in that regards. And then there's just all the pieces of utility billing. The first thing that we have to do, and I believe we're at this point now, is we have to establish the correct services on the correct accounts. So what utilities does every account have? That's every home and commercial business in the city.

So do you have trash pickup? Do you have water? Do you have sewer? If you're a business, do you have exception meters? Does some water that you take into the business go out through the sewer? And does other product leave through evaporation or go into a product that have to go through exception meters. So there's all these kinds of things that go into it. You can't even do a balance forward until all those services are attached, the correct accounts on Tyler Munis. So that has been the number one thing we've worked on, I think, over the past year is to get the correct services on the correct accounts. We can check that by running the balances.

We have been, in the past, millions of dollars off on those balances. As of the last one, and I don't want to jinx it, and IT people can be as superstitious as athletes, ironically, sometimes, but we were 100 to $200 off. Not $100,000, but three figures. 1 to $200 off. That's an error that can be corrected post conversion without a huge impact to the resident. If that's only one or two accounts, that can be I don't want use the word easily, but that can be corrected post conversion. A million dollars can't do that. I do have good news. The next stage would be parallel bill running. So we are running our first parallel bill as of May 1.

Now we have run billing in the Tyler Munis system really, we'll say for testing purposes, for curiosity purposes, for familiarity purposes, to just understand what does a bill run look like. But we never matched that to a parallel run on the I Series. As of May 1, we're gonna run utility billing for a particular district on that day. We'll take the results out of the I series, the results out of the Tyler system, and we'll compare them. So then we'll begin to match the parallel utility billing to make sure the billings come out correctly.

Right now, we're scheduled for July 29 as the conversion date. That's probably, just full disclosure, the fifth or sixth conversion date we've scheduled. So to say I'm optimistic, I don't even like to say that anymore. I am. I'm very optimistic, more so than before. But I've said that every single time. Like, I feel good about it this time. I feel good about this time just to have another delay. But it does look good at this point. We've had conversations through the utilities department, the finance department, the IT department, all involved parties.

And I do have a note in the memo here that Mayor Woodford has said at this point, unless it's resident affecting, unless there's a major problem with the billings and what the resident's going receive in the mail, we have to go live at this point. So internal strife, internal issues is something that we're just going to have to say, Okay, if we have to do some manual processes to clean this up after the conversion, we're going to do that as long as it's nonresident affecting. So that's where that stands right now. I'm going to continue to go on until you cut me off here. But the other thing with utility billing is, originally, when I arrived here, after property taxes finished, EAM was supposed to be next.

And I sat down with the mayor, and we had a discussion. And I said that I felt that it would be better to go toward utility billing because it was revenue. I wanted to get the revenue off of the I Series and into the Tyler system. I wanted that to be the priority so that if the I Series did go down, at least we were able to collect revenue. So the that's exactly what we did.

We went into the utility billing conversion. A year into it, we were ready to begin EAM, or EAM was due to start. We were confident enough that utility billing would finish within the next three months that we went ahead and began to run EAM parallel. That went on for a year. So for the past year, city staff has been doing two ERP conversions, one for utility billing and one for EAM.

That's caused a considerable enough amount of stress and distraction. The mayor and I sat down, and we agreed no more. We would now that EAM is behind us and finished on time, we would finish utility billing before beginning the final module, permitting and licensing. We have on the calendar the contract is signed for permitting and licensing. We have a tentative date with the supplier to begin September 1.

It sounds far out there, but July 29, that's the very July, that only gives us about thirty days to close utility billing. So I really feel like September 1 will probably move, because there will be thirty days of cleanup on the utility billing conversion. So we're going to hold that date until we can at least get a more solid date, whether that be October or November. But I'm confident, should utility billing finish or convert in July, we'll be able to start permitting and licensing. That one's estimated to be about a year. So we're looking to be fully off the I series now, November, December next year, 2026.

Excellent.

So I'll open it up to questions. I know that was a lot. But I wanted to introduce this whole topic to the new committee here, as well as just sort of close-up some of the things that had been outstanding from previous committee.

Any committee members with questions? Alder Hayden.

A couple of questions. What kind of savings are we looking forward to achieve with moving to the ERP? Or are there any savings? Are we just looking at efficiencies and getting decommissioning a system that is no longer viable?

Right. So you're not going to see a hard dollar savings. So if you look at the I Series right now, the our support on it is under $10,000 a year. Now, that's not because it's such a great system that has all this cheap support. That's because we can't get support. We're down to our last supplier in the country. And they actually had called us a couple years ago and said, we can't help you anymore. We can't get parts for this. So we said, what if we got the parts? So we literally went out to eBay and the auction sites, and we bought two used I Series and had them sent to the city on pallets.

So we store all of our own parts for this system. And the supplier has agreed to use those parts to fix the system as needed. And that's what we do. So it's really a matter of it's not a matter of cost savings. We're well beyond that. We're into a whole new mode of we have to keep the city running. We have to produce a utility bill. We have to produce, or we have to be able to receive property taxes. This is business continuity. This really isn't efficiency. That said, Director Holman was just here, and I believe she referenced EAM, into the efficiencies she's experiencing now that she's live on EAM. It frees up FTEs because the system starts to guide workflows. And I think we'll start to see efficiencies just with staff.

Alder Gaiden.

Thank you. One other question about your parallel run. When you're reviewing your parallel run, do you have an automated process to review bill by bill by bill? Or are you just picking, like, the thirtieth, the fiftieth, and doing a manual review?

So I can answer those questions one in two ways, and neither of those are tonight. Can bring We have enough time left to I can go bring over our all systems analyst in to answer that question at the next meeting directly, and you can get a direct answer from our our lead systems analyst. Or I can ask her to write an email to the committee to explain what that process looks like. But I can't I just can't speak to that. I don't know what that's gonna look like.

I don't wanna ruin their Wednesday nights. I'd be happy with an email.

Okay. Alright. I'll make a note of that for her to follow-up with you.

Excellent. Anyone else with any questions, concerns? Alright. Thank you, Director Popp. Moving on to item number 20Five-four07, the APD staffing study update. I assume that's Director Raschmann.

Director Seven? Thank you. So given that we have a new committee, also brought a number of information items forward. If the committee can recall last year, we did an RFP to do a staffing study for our police department. We kicked that project off at the 2024. I just wanted to provide an update. I don't have any data to give you other than like what's the status of the project. That project has five stages total. We're currently in stage four. We're actually just about finished with stage four.

Stage four is to conduct a comparative evaluation of the Appleton Police Department to identify gaps in service goals versus performance. So right now there's a draft that's been provided, and then we'll have a final copy from there. The fifth stage is the final report. So I'm told that we should anticipate that in about another month, or we can do a review of it. When we met with the matrix earlier this week, that's the organization doing the study, they will do a presentation to the council as well as for what the final report is.

It's hard to give any sort of feedback as to what have we found so far. It's only until all five pieces come together that we can really give like a recommendation or show as to what the outcomes are. So that's the status of that project.

Excellent. Any questions from anybody on the committee? Alright moving on then to item number 20 five-four zero eight, the Valley Transit Staffing Update. Director Rachman.

So we've talked about valley transit quite a bit over the past few years and difficulty recruiting bus drivers etc we've made a lot of changes at valley transit the big one last year was change in the schedule That reduced the number of drivers from 36 down to 24 drivers. So the extra hours are now staffed with the paratransit system, which is through Valley Transit too. Through the past couple of years, we've additional marketing through Red Shoes. That's actually budgeted through Valley Transit. We've offered sign on bonuses, referral bonuses.

We didn't have a lot of success with those bonuses, even though the dollar amounts were fairly high. We continue to fill a part time pool of drivers. These are individuals that can fill in when we have gaps in the schedule, and that's really valuable. Right now, the goal for Valley Transit is to have 24 full time drivers. That's a bit of a moving target from the standpoint of, if we had 24 trained, fully available drivers, that would be the perfect number.

But we also have new employees who are in training. We might have pending retirements that we're planning for. So that's why in the recruitment status report, you'll see kind of an asterisk that says number kind of varies depending on what the circumstances are. As of today, we have 24 full time drivers, okay? But several are in training, so you will not see us take the bus driver off the recruitment of the status report.

We have five part time drivers as well that can fill in. So staffing from the driver standpoint is it's okay. I wouldn't say it's great because I think great would be full time seasoned drivers who could fill in the schedule wherever needed. Transit also has an open maintenance operations supervisor position that was on hold for a bit and we are in the final stages with a candidate. You've heard me say before, those on the committee, I don't get too excited until they start because things can change, but we are getting to the final stages.

We also have a mechanic position open. It's on hold for now. We've been meeting with the union about that position and trying to restructure some things differently. I guess we'll see where those talks go. So for now, Valley Trans is taking a step back from trying to fill that position. So other than that, I think staffing is an okay place with Valley Transit.

Is Mr. McDonald feeling secure in what you're currently experiencing as far as bus drivers and there's not they're not really having real struggles with scheduling and that sort of thing? It's just sort of a status quo, doing okay?

I think right now, if you were to ask that question, there's still some struggles because we have a fair amount of new employees who are in training. Plus we have a new employee who just started on the twenty first, which was two days ago. So that's when you only have 24 full time drivers, that does create strain. And so that's filled by overtime. Sometimes some of our management staff jump in the bus and help out as well.

Okay. Excellent. Any other questions? Alder Wolf.

Thank you, Chair. Considering where we were about a year ago, right? I feel like this is a much better place even with the new employees. So it looks as if the changes were a good change. And you mentioned overtime. Are we still looking at the same amount of overtime or is it far less overtime for those drivers?

I do not have numbers so I'd have to get those numbers to you. But when we were dealing with 11 drivers down at one point, I mean the amount of overtime was significant to the point not just the dollars, but burnout.

And it's not there, right? We're not facing that same amount of overtime with the drivers?

Not that I'm aware of.

Okay.

That's the main focus. So that's also good news as well.

Just for full disclosure, there are some drivers that do pick up a fair amount of overtime. They can sign up based on seniority or they make themselves available. So there are some drivers who work a fair amount of overtime as well. But some of that's by design or choice.

Yeah. And that's perfectly fine by me. Thank you.

Any other questions concerns from the committee?

All

right. Oh, Alder Sansom Martin.

Alder Wolfe mentioned where we were a year ago. Can you just quickly fill me in on what employment was like a year ago or what the status of Valley Transit was a year ago?

So for several years, we've had a difficult time trying to fill our vacancies. And part of that is it's a CDL with a passenger endorsement that's required for that job. So Valley Transit had extended hours that would go until 11:00 at night and then even longer hours on the weekend. So for quite a long time, we met with the union. Actually, we met with the management between transit and HR, and then as well as with the union to talk about what's the biggest issue.

What we heard is it's the long hours. And so what Valley Transit did is they made changes to their schedule. So the larger buses that Valley Transit operates, they operate at reduced hours. And then that is supplemented with what's called paratransit, which is run through a separate organization. Even though it's called Valley Transit, it's a separate entity from the city of Appleton. And that's run like, for a better lack of a better way to put it, it's almost like an Uber service. So that's how it's supplemented. Does that help? Yeah. Okay.

Any other questions? All right. We'll move on then to item number 20 five-four zero nine, fire negotiations. Director Ratchman?

So current contract runs through December 1. We are entering into negotiations starting on May 6. So I will keep the committee updated. Any sort of successor contract would come to this committee for review and approval. Excellent. Thank you.

Questions? All right. Last item before item eight is twenty five-four ten, the recruitment status report through 04/17/2025. Any highlights, Director Etchman?

I think I hit the big one on Valley Transit. Any questions? I'm happy to answer them.

Any other questions from anybody here? All right. Thank you very much. I will entertain item number eight.

Move to adjourn. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. We are adjourned.